Come back, Gordon Brown… UPDATED

All is not forgiven by any means, not even remotely. But when the Cobbleition are doing things that are just as stupid as those Gordon Clown himself did there’s a case to be made that you might as well put the lurching, snot munching, cyclopean horror with the faecal Midas touch back in charge and be bloody done with it.

The Prime Minister and his deputy, Nick Clegg, will unveil proposals to help first-time buyers of new homes by carrying part of the risk of their mortgages.

Dave, Nick, say it ain’t so. Tell us that even you aren’t so monumentally stupid that you can’t see that it’s precisely this kind of policy – using taxpayers’ money to underwrite loans for overpriced housing to people who are at higher risk of being unable to repay them – that led with grim inevitability to the fucking subprime mortgage crisis in the fucking first place. And what did that lead to in its turn? Oh, yes, that’d be adding to an unsustainable bubble with a bonus prize of a banking crisis, wouldn’t it? And you two freak shows are now standing here telling us that you want to fucking do it all over again in the deluded belief it’ll get the economy moving. Folks, I think this year’s Jeff Buckley Award for being the Public Figure Most Hopelessly Out of Their Depth may end up being shared.

They also propose subsidising the construction of 16,000 homes by giving £400 million of taxpayers’ money to property developers.

Oh, why not just round it up to a neat half billion? It’s only money, after all, and of course you don’t need to worry because it’s not yours anyway. Listen, you morons, every bloody pound of subsidies – every penny the government spends, in fact – is a pound that must be taken off someone’s disposable income either now or in the future. You’re taking money away from people who might otherwise be able to put it towards the deposit for a house, d’you see? Or a car, or a meal out, or a newspaper or any number of things. They might even decide to stick it in the bank and save it if someone gives them an interest rate that can’t be described as comical. Now tell me I’m wrong but if you want the housing market to pick up does it really make sense to take money away from people who need it to buy houses with? The very people that are currently worrying you because they’re not buying houses because lenders aren’t all that happy with the risks at the moment? Dave, Nick, please try to understand this: more disposable income + lower house prices = more houses being sold. Okay? And conversely less disposable income + higher house prices = … want to take a guess? Do you see now, you pair of utter fucktroons?

And pardon me for asking, but what the hell does the government need the housing market to pick up for anyway? It was overpriced. It still is. It doesn’t need ‘unblocking’ like it’s a toilet that Gordon Clown and his badger faced sock puppet left bunged up after a particularly nasty dump – it needs the very correction you idiots are trying to forestall. Nobody disputes that the British economy needs reviving, but if there’s a lesson to be learned from the last government, and Christ knows there’s more than just one, surely it’s that an economy that’s running on a spending boom fuelled by a combination of cheap credit and appreciating house prices making people feel richer than they really are is not an economy that will run indefinitely before hitting trouble. Yet, Dave and Nick, this seems to be pretty much what you want to do.

In a further move, ministers are working on a scheme under which billions of pounds of money in pension funds will be used to finance the construction of power stations, wind turbines and roads.

What? WHAT? WHAT? Are you fucking serious? On top of everything else have you two started channelling Robert Maxwell or something?

Treasury sources said talks had been conducted with pension fund managers for months. They are hoping to attract managers to invest in infrastructure schemes because they provide a better rate of return than government bonds.

Oh, no shit? And the Cobbleition government, unlike its predecessors of all stripes, has suddenly got good at picking winners and reckons that the best investments around at the moment happen to be the things that it does and taxes people for because… uh, because there’s rarely profit to be made in them.* Oh well, at least they’re not talking about using Labour’s idea of helping themselves to money in old accounts, even if that’s probably just because they’ve already cleaned them out.

Look, Dave and Nick, the government already lighten the pockets of the British motorist to the tune of some £45-50 billion, in return for which about a fifth of that is spent on the roads, and now you want to fill in the few zillion potholes you’ve missed with the contents of their pension funds? Oh, and erect a few more bird mincing white elephants that are, to use Malcolm Tucker’s phrase, as much use as a marzipan dildo, and so uneconomic that nobody in their right mind would build even one if not given someone else’s money to offset the otherwise certain losses. And no, I’m not just saying that because Phil the Greek thinks so. Might I suggest that if you want more to be spent on road maintenance and other infrastructure (but not bird mincers) you stop spending money somewhere else? It’s called living within your means, which is a concept that even plankton in the oceanic depths could probably wrap what passes for their heads around – in the depressingly likely event that you can’t find anyone in Whitehall who understands go out and find a real person to explain it to you.

As for power stations, again I feel there is a lesson that should have been learned from the Labour years – just get out of the bloody way and let someone build the fucking things. Seriously, it’s not like a power station doesn’t produce something that people need and for which a ready market exists – Christ, even wind turbines have got that much going for them, they just can’t produce it steadily and reliably – so there should be a return on building them providing the initial costs aren’t prohibitive. That means not having interminable inquiries before graciously allowing someone to begin work on building something that people need, and then telling them to stop again because some middle class white kid with dreadlocks and a dream of erasing the memory of the silver (plated) spoon by not washing has found a pond, and look, there’s like all tadpoles in it, dude. It means, as I mentioned, the government doing it’s best just to get out of the fucking way.

Separately, Lord Heseltine, who advises the Government on growth, said MPs should waive through critically important infrastructure projects to get the economy moving.

It pains me to agree with a man who still wants Britain to sign up to the currency version of Heaven’s Gate but that’s kind of the thing I’m on about, though as an aside this isn’t:

The former Cabinet minister said the Government could work with Ed Miliband, the Labour leader, to agree on which major projects to push through.

Yes, very good, Michael, a government of literally all the twats. Wonderful. Nurse! He’s out of bed again.

But really, why not? The Cobbleition really are as bad as Labour, and we all know Labour were pretty shocking. But I’ve lost count of the number of times I’ve ranted and raved and railed at some new piece of pettiness or authoritarianism or nannying or incompetence or lack of backbone (especially with regard to the EU) or just plain epic fuckwittery. I’ve lost count how often I’ve said that it’s just like Labour never left office. I even began this rant with the observation that if this is what Dave and Nick want to do then Britain might as well give up and bring back Gordon Brown to finish the demolition job he started. And if all the main parties are bent on Britain’s self destruction and disagree only on the speed at which it should happen, if the only long term hope is to rebuild from the ashes, then it’s starting to look to me like the petrol and matches and matches may as well be given to the worst nutter of the lot.

The alternative, of course, is to get rid of the whole bloody lot of them and replace them with sane people, but for some reason this doesn’t seem to have very broad appeal in the UK. I’m sure the millions attached firmly to the tax tit and the millions more brainwashed to believe that this is how it has to be haven’t got anything to do with it.

‘Kinell!

UPDATE – Trust The Daily Mash to get to the essence of it.

The prime minister said: “This package will help to reinflate the house price bubble and give mortgages to people who can’t really afford them. Unless anyone has any better ideas?”

Wonderful caption on the picture, too: “If it’s broke fix it with the thing that broke it.”

I feel like Private Frasier.

UPADTE 2 – Also blogged superbly and without all the swearing over at Counting Cats in Zanzibar.

* That often there’s rarely profit to be made precisely because government is involved probably doesn’t occur to them.

Light blogging this week…

… means that the only comment I really have time to make on the above headline is “Are you fucking serious or have you been doing lines of mercury?” Not that Cameron is not a complete twat and his government almost as big a bunch of disappointing and feckless wankers as, well, as the Labour governments of the previous 13 years, but for one thing the government isn’t actually cutting police numbers. Seems to me that if forces want to spend their budgets on expensive or irrelevant bullshit rather than police officers then their numbers, or lack thereof, is a problem of their own making. Just an idea this, but they could start with multiplying the number of officers they’d like by the salaries they’d need to pay and then subtracting that number from the budget before spunking money away on other stuff. It’s a thought, that’s all.

And for another thing the Cobbleition hasn’t made any cuts. This is getting really fucking tedious to have  to keep saying this, but cuts are badly needed and the Cobbleition has failed to cut a penny off of overall public spending, and in fact they’ve managed to spend even more. Yes, they have been more profligate than even the crazed fuckwits who preceded them, and only those crazed fuckwits and their equally crazed and fuckwitted followers could possibly imagine that a government that spends more than the last one has cut a fucking thing. The only point at which the concept of spending less enters into it is that they are spending less than the profligate cocksocket Brown would have spent if he’d managed to win the election. That’s it, and it does not qualify as a cut any more than saying I’ll take out a loan to buy a Ferrari next year and then changing my mind is saving money.<

I’d suggest to Yvette Cooper that she goes home and asks around her family to see if someone can explain it to her, but since her family has got Ed Balls in it that’s probably a waste of time.

‘Kinell!

Another Gordon Brown chicken comes home to roost

And to no great surprise rather than being the kind that maybe provides a few eggs it’s a chicken of the shitting everywhere and possibly giving everyone bird ‘flu variety. Well, what else could we expect when it’s enjoyed Brown’s faecal Midas touch.

[Health Secretary] Andrew Lansley says he has been contacted by 22 health service trusts which claim their “clinical and financial stability” is being undermined by the costs of the contracts, which the Labour government used extensively to fund public sector projects.
[…]
Under the PFI deals, a private contractor builds a hospital or school. It owns the building for up to 35 years, and during this period the public sector must pay interest and repay the cost of construction, as well as paying the contractor to maintain the building.
However, the total cost of the deals is often far more than the value of the assets. As a result, Mr Lansley says, the 22 trusts “cannot afford” to pay for their schemes, which in total are worth more than £5.4billion, because the required payments have risen sharply in the wake of the recession.

Well done, Labour, and well done, Gordon, you shower of epically incompetent cunts. It worked well as an idea to help you spunk money into things so you got nice headlines along the lines of ‘Government announces new £X million hospital for Anytown’ while also being a way for you to be less than open about the full scale of the debts you were running up in the country’s name. But it was a bad deal and I struggle to believe you didn’t know it, because if the papers can work it out surely someone in the Treasury spotted it as well.

Earlier in the year, The Daily Telegraph disclosed the extremely poor value offered by many PFI schemes. Taxpayers are having to pay more than £200billion for schools, hospitals and other projects whose capital value is little more than £50 billion.

And this leaves the Cobbleition with having to find ways to make payments. They don’t want to make cuts, which is just as well since contrary to popular belief among the hard of thinking they haven’t made any, and I get the feeling they don’t have a clue how to. My bet is they’ll borrow because the mandarins who run things don’t know any other way and today’s politicians don’t have the balls to stop it or the vision to privatise or charity-ise (if there’s such a word) almost everything the British state does and let the whole fucking lot stand or fall on its individual merits. Christ, they’re barely getting to grips with trimming some of Labour’s fat.

It also emerged last night that the Coalition was expected to announce it is abandoning Labour’s calamitous £12billion NHS computer scheme. Ministers will dismantle the National Programme for IT, a “one size fits all” project started in 2002 which has never worked, and relace it with regional schemes.

You’ve been in office for 16 fucking months, you feckless cunts. Is this all you’ve got to show for almost a fucking year and a half’s work? You’ve worked out that scrapping one of Labour’s hare-brained, over priced vanity projects – one that should have been killed before that fucking Labour drone and, judging by the fresh-from-a-come look he sometimes wore, possible rohypnol victim Andy Burnham had even left the fucking building – will save you a few quid.

Well, that’s a relief. I thought for a moment Britain might have been in trouble.

‘Kinell!

Climbdowns

Yeah, but is Gordon?

And more damned lies

Toby Young, writing in The Telegraph (yes, I know I keep taking the piss out of it but some of the blog writers there are pretty good) dissects Gloomy McSnotmuncher’s speech. It was good to see that a couple of MPs brought him up on the McBride-Whelan business and asked why the Browns were still pally with the Murdochs and with Rebekah Brooks two and three years after the story on their son ran, but there was another little oddity that I’d missed elsewhere.

If, as Brown claims, the Cabinet Secretary obstructed his efforts to order a judicial inquiry into the dastardly goings-on at News International, why did Sir Gus O’Donnell issue a denial immediately after the speech claiming that the decision not to launch an inquiry was Brown’s and Brown’s alone? Sir Gus is now seeking permission to publish the confidential advice to rebut the allegation.

Well, I can’t see how the two sides of that story can both be true. I have no idea how much light it might shed on things but still, let’s hope Sir Gus O’Donnell gets the okay to back up his version of events, or failing that publishes it anyway. There’ll be a replacement for the NotW soon enough though if technically it’s not supposed to be published they might not want it. Bit soon, really.

Gordon Brown’s or Sir Gus O’Donnell’s? Place your bets.

H/T to The Libertarian Alliance.

Could you narrow it down a bit please?

Via Guido, The Grim Reaper, Constantly Furious and others, a headline that could have been used perhaps a couple of times a month for most of the last decade or more, and which in the days of movable type would probably not have been unset but left on a handy shelf for when they were needed.

And actually this sounds to me like more than merely being honestly mistaken about the means by which the story was obtained. It’s not just that the source turned out to be nothing at all to do with not-actually-hacking but the rather low tech man-talks-to-journalist technique, but The Sun say they had the Browns’ consent to run the story. Now assuming that’s true – and I’m not holding my breath for an outright denial from McSnotty – wouldn’t you expect the Browns to first ask where the story had come from? Perhaps not if gently broken by a friendly and sympathetic journo, and of course Labour and The Sun were very pally at the time, but then the question becomes why, if the Browns weren’t all cut up at the time, they’re so upset now and why they didn’t tackle it when it happened? As Guido puts it:

If Gordon wanted he could have gone to the PCC and invoked 6 (v) of the PCC code, which would have killed the story, or complained afterwards. If Rebekah Brooks made him cry it seems odd that he subsequently went to her wedding, attended her birthday party and got Sarah to host a “girls” sleep-over at Chequers with Rebekah Brooks and Wendi Murdoch.

Yes, it seems very odd indeed. And given Guido’s earlier point that the cyclopean nightmare of Downing Street’s pet think tank was being investigated right at the time the story about his son came out this remark of The Sun’s is particularly interesting (my bold).

On receipt of the information, The Sun approached Mr Brown and discussed with his colleagues how best to present it.

Not that I’d take their word for it either but again if true – stressing ‘if’ – it sounds a lot like Nokia’s favourite customer was happy for The Sun to run a story that would generate sympathy for him and his family. And now he’s not.

Ah, who knows? Perhaps someone’s just missing the limelight.

Cobbleition out-Labouring Labour for the second time this week

It was less than 48 hours ago that I was sitting here abusing the Cobbleition for being as bad a bunch of bastards as Labour was because, like Labour, they’re sticking the details of innocent people into a police database. Now I’m going to have to do it again.

This is Chancer of the Exchequer George Osborne speaking in 2006 on the then Chancer Snot Muncher McDoom’s decision to impose a stealth tax on private pensions shortly after Labour came to power nine years earlier.

George Osborne, the shadow chancellor, said: “Gordon Brown’s pension raid was one of his first and worst acts as Chancellor. Pensioners will be paying a heavy price for many, many years to come.”

So I’m looking forward to hearing what he has to say to justify this news:

George Osborne, the Chancellor, is considering a £7 billion “raid” on middle-class pensions perks.
[…]
Discussions have begun at the Treasury over the move which would see the axing of tax relief currently paid out on pension contributions by people who pay income tax at the higher rates of 40 per cent and 50 per cent.
[…] The Sunday Telegraph understands that the plans for ending so-called “higher-rate” relief have restarted as Mr Osborne targets immediate cash flow savings as easy “wins”.
[…]
Some Conservative MPs expect the axing of higher-rate relief to be merely the first stage in a more extensive and radical plan which would end up with all tax relief – including on contributions made by people paying the basic 20p rate of income tax – being abolished, saving £22 billion a year in total.

So, Gordon took £5 billion a year and it was, according to The Boy George, one of his worst acts as Chancer and one for which pensioners would pay for years to come, and now the hypocritical shit is thinking about taking £7 billion – which is more or less exactly the same fucking amount after adjusting for inflation (38% since 97). Like I said, I’m looking forward to hearing how Georgie justifies this. I mean, what the fuck is he thinking of by even considering it? I know the country has money problems, thanks in no small part for the profligate spunking away of other people’s money by the aforementioned connoisseur of nasal effluence, but you know what, George? You could try maybe spending less fucking money instead. The Telegraph even tells you how.

Saving £7 billion a year would be the equivalent of axing three government departments – Energy and Climate Change, whose budget is £2.9 billion a year, Environment Food and Rural Affairs, also £2.9 billion, and Culture, Media and Sport, (£1.5 billion).

Depending on your point of view one of those departments has a track record of incompetence that would have seen it chopped long ago had it been in the private sector, another appears to be so busy plotting Britain’s economic destruction that it can only save a fortune in the long run by abolishing it now, and the third appears not to be a fucking government function anyway. Alternatively you could make the supposed bonfire of the QUANGOs into an actual fucking bonfire by getting rid of the fucking lot, rather than the entry level Foreman Grill of the QUANGOs that still left billions being spent on rent seekers and time waster. And the EU, oh George, do we even need to go over yet again how much money Britain’s membership of this Debt of the Month Club is costing everyone in the country? It’s not even just the regular annual cost these days but the additional costs of the bailouts and loans to other member nations whose creditworthiness is considered too risky for them to be able to borrow money from the usual sources.

Lots of options, George, but the one that seems to find most favour at the moment involves screwing yet more money out of Britain’s dwindling stock of economically productive citizens. That you’re going for the well off, people who’ve on salaries far larger than I’ve ever been lucky enough to earn, is neither here nor there. The message is coming through loud and clear, George: if you’re a high earner you’re better off not earning it in Britain, because the government is eyeing your fucking wallets again. Once again I’m singing the same depressing chorus – it’s like Labour never really went away, isn’t it?

Fucking exactly like it.

And the devious, hypocritical, tax-happy, thieving shower of cunts call themselves Conservatives? Bwahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahaha!

Red Ed’s 2 minute biography.

Good at solving Rubik’s Cube, but can’t suggest any other skills of the top of his head. Describes himself as “too square” to have ever tried any drugs or even dared to indulge in a little underage drinking. Got beaten up a lot at school, and possibly thinks of Teri Hatcher, Rachel Weisz and Scarlett Johansson a lot in deeply private moments. Very firm on the fact that he’s not married. All in all he sounds like just the person you’d want for a dinner party. As a waiter.

I have little doubt that Cameramong, who’s at least as big a bell-end, was laughing his balls off reading that. And talking of balls, I expect Blinky was too. But then this all came out in a GQ interview with Piers Morgan, who as I recall was always pally with Blinky’s mate and mentor, Snotty McMuncher-Broon, extremely part-time member for Kirkcaldy and Cowdenbeath when he can fit it in.

Wankers and cockslots, the lot of them.

Skidding off the Laffer Curve.

I do hope this doesn’t come as a shock to anyone in the real world.

The Treasury will lose hundreds of millions of pounds in vital tax revenues each year as hedge fund managers move overseas, experts have warned.
One-in-four hedge fund employees has already left London to move to Switzerland, which is said to have a more stable tax regime, according to consultancy Kinetic partners.
Calculations by the company claim the UK could have already forgone about £500m in tax revenues, based on the 1,000 or so hedge fund managers it says have already left the country.
The introduction of the 50pc tax rate on earnings above £150,000 is thought to have triggered the departure of many hedge fund managers. Political attacks and regulatory uncertainty have also been cited as key reasons.

Well done, Gordon. Well done, Ally. If you foresaw the election result and chose to leave a little land mine for the Cobbleition in the form of a tax George’ll be tempted to keep just to try to make ends meet (not a hope) but which will actually tempt the wealthiest and most mobile taxpayers to bugger off to where they can keep more of what they earn, then well done to you both – it was a brilliant move.

On the other hand if, as is much more likely, you actually thought it was going to make more money for HM Treasury you are indeed the pair of deluded twats that I always thought you were.

How much? (Part 2)

Temporarily removed for correction

Ex Number Ten, now looking out for Number One.

I’ve noticed that Guido had been keeping track of how often the much lamentable former Prime Mentalist and now full time Member for Kirkaldy and Cowdenbeath has actually shown up in Westminster for longer than it takes to ink some paper to ensure he gets paid (it was two or three times in nearly three months the last I remember), and there was some suggestion there that the Cyclopean fuckwit was too busy writing his book to do any actual representing of his constituency. Certainly he’s not been doing much, well, actually any voting.

I don’t know, maybe it might not bother his constituents much that he was elected to do a job – hmmm, that phrase sound oddly familiar – that he’s not now doing although he’s apparently still able to show up often enough to make sure his 65 grand a year is safe. But if Gordon’s plans come off he may not have to bother doing even that much. Since the book profits are going to charidees ‘associated with the Brown family‘, though fuck knows who’s going to buy it, he’s apparently out to boost his income by emulating Tony Blair and charging big fees on the after dinner speaking circuit. Funny, Gordon was supposed to have hated Blair but in some ways it seems almost like he wishes to become Blair.

The former prime minister is aiming to secure bookings worth $100,000 (£64,000) a night, it has been reported.

Or roughly his current annual salary. This might sound like a lot for perhaps three quarters of an hour to an hour’s ‘work’ but at the rate he’s going it could be about as much time as he’s likely to spend in Westminster anyway.

Mr Brown has asked a London speaking agency to find engagements for him in the Middle East and Asia, according to The Spectator.

So let me get this straight. He’s not getting offers, he’s just putting himself out there as a speaker. I wonder how long he’ll have to wait before the queues form.

The magazine claimed that Mr Brown would also require clients to pay for five-star hotel accommodation, a first-class flight and three business-class flights.

Gosh, that’s a shock. I thought he’d be wanting to pay for that out of his fee. Still, makes a change from the taxpayer coughing up for his travel and board, except of course those trips down the the Westminster cashpoint probably aren’t coming out of Gordon’s pocket.

Mr Brown’s wife Sarah could accompany him to engagements, such as award ceremonies, for an extra $20,000 (£12,800), it was reported.

What a bargain. I can’t think of anything a big do needs more than the wife of one of the shortest serving and worst British Prime Minister’s turning up not to speak herself but to fucking watch him do it, for only 20% more than the already insane fee he wants for verbally fellating himself in public. You’d have to be mad to pass up such an offer unless someone even better came along.

Look I’ve got my old pledge card a bit battered and crumpled, we said we’d provide more turches churches teachers and we have.

Okay, maybe his Lordshit isn’t a great example.

An executive at one London speakers’ bureau said: “We all have a fairly good idea about the general demand out there for different people, and I haven’t heard of a single request for Gordon Brown, so I’m surprised anyone wants to pay him that much”.

Yeah, that’s about what I thought. Good luck getting anything like that, Gordon.

A spokesman for Mr Brown last night said: “Gordon has of course had many invitations to speak from around the world and a range of institutions.
“But at the moment he is focussed on his constituency work…”

What fucking constituency work? Okay, he’s done a few surgeries and we’ll give him the benefit of doubt and assume he’s written a few letters on behalf of constituents, but the record of actually representing them in Parliament remains no votes and not a word said since before the election. According to The Telegraph his friends are saying he’s just keeping out of the way while a new leader of the Labour party is sorted out and will be about more later in the year, though since his book is due out round then I’d suggest that his constituents not expect his job to get in the way of book promoting and publicity. And then, since he’s said he’s hoping for a future in international development, and obviously between all the after dinner speaking engagements, he’s bound to find loads of time to look after the interests of the people who elected him.

Isn’t he?

Or should the prick just have fucked off to the Chiltern Hundreds back in May?

Can Aussie Labor show British Labour how it’s done? – UPDATED

As I type this PM Kevin Rudd is on TV giving an emergency press conference. Newsflash suspension of normal programming type press conference.

Deputy PM Julia Gillard has come to see him and they’ve been having a long chat this evening, which seems to have ended with her requesting a leadership contest to decide if Rudd should remain leader of the Australian Labor Party, and therefore PM. What he’s saying is very familiar to British ears and sound like they’ve been lifted from a Gordon Clown speech. Lots of guff about ‘lurching to the right’ and ‘I have been elected by the people of Australia’ (which of course he hasn’t any more than the people of Britain elected Gordon Brown – Rudd’s ALP won an election which Brown’s Labour didn’t, but only the ALP and people in the part of Brisbane where his seat is got the chance to vote for him). What he isn’t saying is whether or not Julia Gillard has said she’ll stand against him. A lot of ALP members seem to prefer her to Rudd and if she did stand she’s likely to be a much heftier opponent than any of the fucking lightweights who opposed, or more often didn’t oppose Gordon Brown, despite being well aware of his growing unpopularity. So watch this space, and see if the ALP are able to deal with a leader and PM who’s looking more and more like an electoral liability in the way that the British Labour party couldn’t quite find the balls for.

UPDATE – Julia Gillard is in the contest, and personally I’d put ten bucks on her to win. I don’t particularly want her to but I think she will, and I doubt she’ll be worse than the alternatives. Like the UK there isn’t one of them I’m happy to vote for in the federal election later this year – yes, the ALP is trying to ditch an unpopular leader before the election, not afterwards – but she might even be the least worst option.

Which is Britain’s real ‘Nasty Party’?

Obviously there are multiple contenders and even if you restrict yourself to the biggest three (or the three wings of the biggest party, depending on your point of view) you could probably make a case for saying it’s all of them. But for a long time the Labour Party, and until very recently the LibDems too, have been painting the Tories as the Britain’s nasty party, and they’ve been successful in getting most of the country to believe it. Motes and beams, pots and kettles. True, there’s a lot to dislike about the Tories but much of what really annoys me about them applies to Labour and the LibDems as well. However, you don’t even need to be particularly libertarian to see that Labour is also very capable of being nasty, not to say downright spiteful, and that this goes from the top all the way down.

Exhibit A, via Leg-Iron and others, is that virtually the last thing Gordon Clown did before leaving office handing over the bat and ball for someone else to have a turn was to spoil it for the next boy at the crease by smashing the bat and throwing the ball away. I’m not just talking about the increased profligacy to further bankrupt the nation and poison the ground for the next government in the hope that they’d be blamed for the pain that had to follow. That was going on much earlier. No, this was something that would affect just his successor as PM, and hit him right in the wallet.

Mandrake hears that one of Brown’s final acts in the Downing Street bunker was quietly to organise a pay cut for his successor which he must have known would leave him out of pocket to the tune of hundreds of thousands of pounds.
On Brown’s orders, the Prime Minister’s remuneration package was cut from £194,000 to £150,000, but this was done with such stealth that no formal announcement was ever made.
Indeed, I am told that Cameron entered Downing Street blissfully unaware that he would, as Prime Minister, be earning only marginally more than he had as the leader of the Opposition.
One imagines that the poor chap must therefore have set about implementing his pre-election pledge of an across-the- board cut in ministerial salaries of five per cent with a heavy heart as this took his salary down to £142,000.

Okay, my heart doesn’t bleed a great deal for The Elder Twin – for one I’m still not sure I like him much better than his predecessor, for another he’s not exactly short of a bob or two and for a third I reckon I could get by on £142,000, especially when a car and a couple of houses plus associated staff come with the job. But the spitefulness of it just reinforces what I’ve long believed about the Cyclopean Nightmare of Drowning Street, and that is that Brown is a petty little prick consumed by envy and hate.* Frankly I’m surprised he didn’t shit in the microwave and leave it turned on.

Exhibit B, via Dick Puddlecote, is John McDonnell, MP for Heys and Harlington and candidate for the Labour party leadership.

And weapons grade cunt.

John McDonnell, a Labour leadership candidate, was applauded loudly yesterday for telling a trade union audience that he wished to go back to the 1980s and assassinate Margaret Thatcher.

…

Describing himself as a victim of the former Tory Prime Minister’s policies because he worked for the Greater London Council and National Union of Mineworkers, Mr McDonnell said he would be glad to “go back to the 1980s and assassinate Thatcher”.

This was apparently meant to be a joke but fucking hell, John, get some up to date material for Christ’s sake. She’s been gone for nearly two fucking decades – even fucking Ben Elton dropped the Thatcher gags ages ago, and saying “Missis Thatch… ooo, bit o’ politics” five times each weekend on Saturday Night Live probably paid that bastard’s mortgage for a few years.

I don’t doubt that McDonut wasn’t being serious, not really serious, when he said he’d like to go back in time and kill Maggie Thatcher, but the fact that he and many other in his party are still using her as a target for their hatred speaks volumes. I will always hold Gordon Brown in utter contempt, I will always despise Tony Blair, I will always feel that John Major was a useless tool who almost fell into the Prime Minister’s job and I will always think that Maggie Thatcher was… well, let’s just say I’m not a huge fan and leave the reasons for another time.** But they’re gone, they’re history, old news, yesterday’s men. As much as I detest the bastard there’s only so much scope for attacking Gordon Brown since I’ve just blogged on the last thing he did in office. Unless he says or does (or turns out to have done) something else his successors both in government and in his party are far more relevant. Similarly I can give the Tories credit for not spending the 1990s incessantly whining and sniping at Jim Callaghan and Harold Wilson because they’d largely got it out of their system by then. But Labour… oh dear, even though she’s now an octogenarian with dodgy bones and dementia they just can’t let her go, can they? I have little doubt that there were first time voters last month who hadn’t even been conceived when she left office but nevertheless feel an urge to spit on the floor if her name is mentioned, as if it was all just yesterday and their party hadn’t had since 19fucking97 – longer if you count the period of Major’s minority government – to fix everything they love to blame her for, and I’m sure more than a few were disappointed last November when the news of Thatcher’s death turned out to refer to a Canadian cat.

They see me livin’, they hatin’.

John McDonnell’s “joke” is typical of this, and while I don’t think he nor anyone else in his party would actually take action to shorten both Maggie Thatcher’s entry in the history books and her entry to the next world I wouldn’t be terribly shocked if one of them had prepared an application for outline planning permission to build a disco on her grave.

Oh, and remember that right at the start of this blog I said that Labour nastiness runs from top to bottom in the party? I feel I should justify that remark so I offer Exhibit C, also from the John McDonnell “kill Thatcher” story. Exhibit C is simply this:

His joke got a standing ovation.

* True, this blog is driven by no small amount of hatred mixed in with the anger and fear and the rest of the Dark Side of The Force (which hasn’t made me able to switch the coffee machine on from across the room or destroy it with lightning bolts for not working, but can at least get me worked up enough to share it) and I’d be a liar if I didn’t admit to feeling envy from time to time, just like everyone else. But while I might envy someone’s Mercedes in itself it wouldn’t be a reason to hate them and I wouldn’t dream of dragging a key down the side of it.
** In fairness none of them was 100% awful – very few people are, though Gordon Brown probably deserves a gold star for effort.

Newsflash.

Nokia shares fall as Brown finally leaves.

Lord Brown of Kirkcaldy and Deadcowbreath – UPDATED.

I suppose that’s what we’re going to have to look forward to calling him now. Oh well, every silver lining has a cloud inside it.

UPDATE – per the comments left outside the Ambush Predator’s cave it seems the bastard may be sticking around for a while yet. Note to self, read past the headline before getting too excited.

‘Kinell.